Besides the curse of COVID-19 pandemic that kept students out of classrooms for two subsequent years (2019-2020 and 2020-21), the fact that the government has taken a tough stand against people resorting to or encouraging malpractices in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) public examinations this year has greatly contributed to the low pass percentage obtained by students.
“The super successful SSC examinations’ bubble has finally burst and there are no two opinions about it. The SSC results has brought us face-to-face with the reality. This is the actual existing education scenario in the State. It has been for last several years, but people were made to believe that schools in the State excelled in the public examinations,” said an official of the Education Department and added, “We need to get real and gear up to improve the standards and prepare our students for ‘real’ examinations.”
The 10th Class examinations conducted by the Board of Secondary Education in April 2022 saw only 67.26 % of the total 6.15 lakh candidates clearing the all-important Board exams.
“The pass percentage is lowest in the last almost 15 to 20 years. There is no denying the fact that the pandemic wreaked havoc with the education sector bringing down the learning outcomes drastically across the world and Andhra Pradesh is no exception,” said an official in the department of Government Examinations, adding that above 90% results obtained by many schools in the State in the last many years was a sham.
“This is a wake up call for all of us and we need to focus on preparedness of the next batches of students, making the best of the resources available,” said the official.
The results this time had brought to the fore some hard facts that need to be taken seriously. Nearly two lakh students failed and of the total 11,650 schools in the State, 79 schools recorded zero pass percentage. Of them 36 schools were in the private sector and 18 were aided schools.
“To demonstrate that the government is serious about cleansing the exam system, the AP Public Examinations (Prevention of Malpractices and Unfair Means) Act, 1997, was invoked against 75 persons who resorted to “malpractices,” said Director, Department of Government Examinations, D. Devananda Reddy, informing that 55 of them were government teachers. The District Collectors and the police officials were asked to crack the whip against those resorting to “mischief” in the exams.
“Long gap of two years that kept students away from classroom teaching, insufficient time left for teachers to take up ‘revision’, children breaking away from the practice of study hours conducted after school hours due to the pandemic, and changes made in the question paper model have contributed to the low performance of students in the exams,” said K. S. Lakshmana Rao, MLC from Krishna-Guntur Graduates’ constituency.
“This is a good beginning. This should serve as an eye-opener and students, parents and teachers should invest sincere efforts to scale-up the results in the days to come,” said a people’s representative.
